Instead of intro
Hello my name is Andrii Goncharuk, but you can call me Andy, I'm a game designer working in Ubisoft, and to be honest... I’m really angry right now...
I’m having an argument with my coworker, topic is, why a person in game industry should play bad games?! To win an argument I need your help, join me!
I need you to play BAD games! (Sometimes)
--- *disclaimer* ---
I understand, that next topic will look and feel like Captain Obvious manifesto, I really I do, but still decided, that for the sake of convenience it won't be bad to gather all obvious and not benefits in one place with references and helpful materials, so be it.
--- *end of disclaimer* ---
What is a bad game?
Is it a game that:
not making money?
backfired with nasty reviews?
not critically acclaimed or wasn't awarded?
obscured and unknown by general audience?
outdated graphics?
wonky face animation in dialog scenes?
game mechanics or balance is broken?
No! Let’s align on one thing, for this topic, when I say bad game, it’s YOUR definition of bad, next here what I mean:
Imagine a situation:
You are playing games of certain genre and style, and recently you met a game that you never played before, by the book it fits you. You decide to pick it up and try it out, but it’s not working out for you, something's not right.
Bad game, is a game that fits your list of being good game, but still, you are not playing it even if you have time for it. Reasons may vary, it can reside in game itself, or around it, maybe server issues or matchmaking(or both).
And in the end you are not investing your time and/or money in that game, and this is what I call a BAD GAME...
Why I’m so generalising?
Easy, there is too many genres and styles, and too many tastes. It’s hard to call a game generally bad... I mean even Air Control has it’s own audience, people who enjoy finding all bugs and glitches in this game. No joke!
So far so good, there is no bad games only bad tastes.
If you are working in game industry, or you directly involved in making games, you HAVE to play bad games (especially of this genre and style that you currently working on!).
But, to make it fair, here is argument’s against that:
Why should I waste my time(money) for something that not worth it?
I can broke my “perfect” taste of “good” games.
Instead of playing BAD games I can play play more good games and get better on understanding why they good, right?
And so on…
And now, ladies and gentlemen's 5 reasons, why you should, play bad games.
Here we go!
Reason number one!
Survivorship bias and
Abraham Wald VS nazi interceptors!
If don’t want to waste your time educating yourself, skip next paragraph.
During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. Researchers from the Center for Naval Analyses had conducted a study of the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions, and had recommended that armor be added to the areas that showed the most damage. Wald noted that the study only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions—the bombers that had been shot down were not present for the damage assessment. The holes in the returning aircraft, then, represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still return home safely. Wald proposed that the Navy instead reinforce the areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, since those were the areas that, if hit, would cause the plane to be lost. Well done! Against All Authorities, you decide to read this wall of text! I will advise you to read full book, it’s really interesting! In the meantime, back to topic!
Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways.
“Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored”.
How this applied to games?
Well, if you have statistics only for GOOD games, you won’t be able to make correct estimations on features/mechanics/ideas for your projects. It affects your judgment, and not in a good way. You could decide that feature A is a good sign of a successful game, but in reality feature A was not the main reason of success, it was feature B, but you missed it because you were focusing your attention on feature A!
In the end, to know how what is really good, you need to know what is bad.
